We’ve dragged ourselves off the bus after no sleep at all. I’ve read most of The Davinci Code and I only started it yesterday. Thankfully it was dark outside on the journey – I think we all would have had heart failure if it wasn’t. The bus driver was a nutter – he was wearing some kind of baby boiler suit and had so many coca leaves stuffed in his mouth to keep him awake he looked like a gerbil. The roads were so bendy that we almost fell out of our seats as he took the corners. My nerves are shot.

We’ve hung around in a tiny, dusty, airless travel agents for a few hours, had our passports stamped to exit Bolivia and we’ve squeezed into a tiny jeep with 4 others. We’ve just had the most weirded out trip ever – and we’re sober.

Many a hippie's brain could have been saved in the 60's had they just come to Bolivia. (They'd probably all have Daniella Westbrook noses though).

What a blissfully mad place. The desert starts as soon as you leave Uyuli. The first thing we come across is a disused railway station, rusted red and sleeping on the craggy earth. It looks like something out of a western.

Back in the jeep and on to the ancient sea bed. I cannot believe I am walking over the remains of an ancient marine civilisation.

Stunning, fascinating; at once freezing and scorching and brilliantly bizarre. Miles and miles and miles of just white. Then more white, with a sprinkling of huge rock formations here and there floating in mid air.

It’s an optical illusion caused by the salt and the light. I fade out the sound of chatter in the jeep hearing only the hum of the engine and stare at the natural marvel in front of me until my eyes blur. It whisks me back to childhood stories of Narnia, before I am bumped back to "reality" by the next stop. We've been driving for two hours.

We've reached the salt hotel - a whole building made entirely out of salt. You can actually stay there. It smells awful inside, but they’ve got bedrooms with furniture made of salt as well as the walls. Mad.

Still tripping....

The highlight of that day had to be Fish island though. You really need to see it to appreciate how amazing and just how bizarre it is. As far as the eye can see all around it is white. It looks like the sea has completely frozen over - only there's no sea. The 'island' is only a few kms long, so you can see the whole thing from a distance, and it is covered in 15 foot high cacti. All of it. The cacti don't just sit on the top of the island - they jut out at all sides too. It looks like a giant porcupine sleeping in the snow.

From the top you can actually see what looks like a beach and then a pure white flat ocean. Some of the cacti are more than 1200 years old. Of all the things I've seen so far this has to be one of the best - certainly the weirdest. Do not even think about missing out Bolivia if you travel South America.

That night we stayed in dorms in a tiny town in the desert. There were a few houses, two shops and a massive clearing which had a small lake on it and was full of llamas and vicunas that were grazing.

We were still at 3900m altitude. This makes for very cold nights - minus 15 on average - which isn't fun at the best of times, but not least when the showers are unisex, communal, outside and have no hot water or shower curtain! Even though I spent last night on a bus there is absolutely no way I’m braving that. Time to smell for a while then.

However if you look up into the sky it will not take long for you to forget the cold. Because it is so high up the night sky is amazing. The stars are so bright and so close it really does feel like you can reach up and touch them. Every single constellation is crystal clear. That night it was a full moon. It was so bright that it did not seem like night time outside. Our timing was impeccable. At about 9.30pm came the start of a full lunar eclipse. It took about two hours to completely cover. All agreed we could not have possibly been in a better place for it.

The next day took in more salt flats, mad bubbling geysers and the lakes. More weirdness. One was bright blue. The other was bright green. And the third was bright red. All three of them looked as if they were completely frozen. The fact that they were surrounded by white made the scene even more bizarre.

I can't remember which chemicals makes them the colours that they are, but lets just say a swim in any of them would not be recommended.

The rest of that day was spent driving through the endless desert. There are small sand dunes everywhere and mountains that look like they have been chopped in half - each of them revealing layer after layer of different coloured strata - beige, red, brown, cappuccino.

There is virtually no green at all except for the odd tiny withered clump of straw in the earth every now and again. The only animals to be seen are the odd vicuna, but that's rare too.

I am left with an image of a chocolate, coffee, mocha mountain overlooking a huge plain of red earth. In the middle of it is a vicuna trying to get what it can from the three stalks of yellow that are protruding from the ground. I wonder how on earth they survive with so little to eat. No wonder they are so thin.

After hours and hours of sand, red rock, dust and mountains we arrived at a military check point. Now this really did look like something straight out of a film set. The barracks were small white circular houses set far back from the main check point. Have you ever seen Star Wars where Luke Skywalker goes home to find his parents have been killed? That’s EXACTLY what it looks like. As far as I know the Star Wars films were shot in Turkey, but I really am starting to wonder whether Lucas visited Bolivia before hand, because the resemblance is uncanny.

Three soldiers were at the check point, all with huge machine guns and looking really mean. Soon enough though, Tim and Maz had offered them cigarettes and the mood changed instantly. Once these guys started smiling you realized that they were delighted to try to chat to us. They were a lot younger than they looked too. Small wonder. It’s a stunning place to see as a visitor, but they must be bored ****less! They checked us through and we continued the last lap of the desert.

Our driver stopped and ushered us out of the jeep. “Pericolo, caliente, caliente” was all he said. Suddenly you couldn’t find anyone anymore for steam. Huge pools of bubbling mud plopped away belching out stinking sulphur from about 10 huge geysers. The Lonely Planet had warned not to get to close because the earth could crumble. Of course Tim ignored this and was trying to get in for a close up of the mud. It was like standing by a fire on a freezing cold night.

As we drove further the rock formations started to get bigger and weirder. Battered by gale force winds for thousands of years there were loads of huge rocks jutting up from the earth that had formed into crazy shapes. There was one that looked like a house, another, a church and another a face.

We saw a strange rabbit creature which looked like a rabbit from the front, but had a huge bushy tail. I’m told it’s a type of rodent. Looks more like a killer Basil Brush.

We stopped briefly at a hot spring where our driver made us breakfast. Unfortunately the springs were too hot to swim in, although there was an area where we could safely dip our toes. The first sight of water my skin had seen in 5 days.

The Doors are playing on my headphones as I stare out of the jeep window. I can't think of a better album to suit the terrain. I half expect to see a naked Indian - but there's none to be found - just red, desolate ground with rocky sand dunes that our driver crashes over with infinite expertise. Eventually our trip comes to an end as we reach San Pedro De Altacama in Chile.